On my way to the office this morning, I passed a group of young people protesting, a Palestinian flag draped over their shoulders. And I asked myself a question I can't shake: why does this generation always fall into the same trap? No matter the history. No matter the context. Even the ones from wealthy families, who went to the best schools, who were dealt every good card. Always the same trap. I don't think it's stupidity. I think it's a mechanism. And a mechanism can be taken apart, piece by piece. A. The observation: everything the state touches becomes unaffordable. Look at economist Mark Perry's famous chart, the one people call "the chart of the century." It tracks US prices since 2000. At the top, what explodes: hospital services, college tuition, textbooks, childcare, housing. Increases of +100%, +150%, up to +250%, far above general inflation. At the bottom, what collapses: TVs, software, phones, toys, clothing. A TV today costs a fraction of what it did in 2000, for an infinitely better product. Look at what separates the two groups. It isn't technology. It isn't complexity. It's one variable: how much the state is involved. At the top, sectors that are subsidized, regulated, shielded from competition, where the state funds demand and blocks supply. At the bottom, sectors where companies fight every single morning to serve you better and cheaper. B. The mechanism: why it's systematic. When the state subsidizes demand without freeing supply, prices rise. Every time. Guaranteed student loans, and universities raise tuition. Housing aid plus blocked building permits, and rents skyrocket. Administered healthcare, and bureaucracy eats the budget before it ever reaches the patient. In France it's even more vicious, because the price doesn't disappear: it hides. You never see the hospital bill, you pay it through payroll contributions. You never see the cost of school, you pay it through taxes. Public spending at 57% of GDP, one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world, more than €3.4 trillion in debt. And the result? Overflowing ERs, falling PISA scores, young people who can't afford to live in the city where they work. The market didn't fail in these sectors. It was never allowed in. C. Suffering demands a culprit. A 22-year-old lives all of this in their bones. They can't find a place to live. Their degree either buries them in debt or opens no doors. The future feels blocked. That suffering is real, and I don't deny it for a second. But human beings can't stand suffering without a culprit. They need a face. A scapegoat. And this is where everything is decided: who taught them how to read the world? D. Whoever tells the story picks the villain. Schools are public. Universities are public. Culture runs on grants. Film goes through funding committees. Public broadcasting shapes the narratives. The people handing down the interpretive framework are, overwhelmingly, paid by the very system that creates the problem. Do you really think that system is going to name itself as the culprit? No. It names the capitalist. The boss. The landlord. "The rich." The multinational. The commercial West. Same role, same casting, every time. E. One lens, a thousand causes. And this brings me back to that flag. A generation taught to read every situation through a single lens, oppressor on one side, rich, Western, capitalist, oppressed on the other, will apply that lens everywhere. To housing. To climate. To conflicts on the other side of the world. The cause changes, the lens stays. That's why the trap is always the same: it's not the cause that draws them in, it's the way of thinking that was installed in them. F. The perfect inversion. Here's the irony. Capitalism is the force that drove down the price of almost everything it touched. The state is the force that blew up the price of almost everything it captured. And young people blame the first for the crimes of the second. It's like blaming the firefighter for the fire because you saw him at the scene. G. The ballot box confirms it. In the US, a few weeks out from the midterms, a large share of urban young voters is getting ready to vote Democrat for more state, more spending, more regulation. New York elected a self-described socialist mayor, carried by young voters, on promises of rent freezes and city-run grocery stores. Rent freezes, the policy that has made housing scarcer everywhere it's been tried. The cure that worsens the disease. In France, it's the same play in two acts. Part of the youth votes for the radical left, which promises more state. Another part votes for the center, which promises to "manage" the state well, and has dug the debt deeper than ever. Two different ballots, one shared assumption: the problem is the market, the solution is the state. H. The way out. These young people aren't stupid. They're right to be angry. They're just aiming at the wrong target. The day they understand that their rent, their tuition and their hospital are expensive precisely because the state runs them, their anger will change direction. They'll stop protesting against those who create. They'll start protesting against those who capture. That day, the greatest intellectual scam of our time will be over.

Cleaning up the clock controversy

¿Y si el mayor peligro para nuestra sociedad no fuera la maldad, sino la estupidez? La alarmante teoría de Dietrich Bonhoeffer que explica el mundo de hoy. La Teoría de la Estupidez de Bonhoeffer: El peligro silencioso Durante los años más oscuros de la Alemania nazi, el teólogo y pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflexionó desde su celda sobre cómo una sociedad culta y moderna había caído en la barbarie colectiva. Su conclusión fue revolucionaria y alarmante: la estupidez es un enemigo del bien mucho más peligroso que la maldad misma. 👉 ¿Por qué es más peligrosa que la maldad? Contra la maldad se puede luchar: se puede denunciar, combatir e incluso legislar en su contra. El malvado, en el fondo, suele tener conciencia de que está rompiendo las reglas. Con la estupidez, en cambio, estamos completamente indefensos. La persona dominada por ella es impermeable a los argumentos lógicos y a los hechos objetivos. Si se le presentan pruebas que contradicen sus dogmas, simplemente las ignora o las tacha de irrelevantes. Al sentirse completamente segura de sí misma, se vuelve agresiva y sumamente peligrosa al ser confrontada. No es un defecto intelectual, sino moral Bonhoeffer aclaró que esto no tiene nada que ver con el coeficiente intelectual o el nivel educativo. Existen mentes brillantes que operan bajo una profunda estupidez y personas sencillas que desbordan sabiduría moral. La estupidez ocurre cuando un individuo renuncia voluntariamente a su capacidad de juicio propio. 👉 El contagio social y el rol del poder Para el pensador, la estupidez es un fenómeno sociológico. Observó que el ascenso de una fuerte estructura de poder (política o religiosa) infecta de estupidez a gran parte de la población. Al integrarse a un grupo o adoptar ciegamente una ideología, el individuo sacrifica su independencia interior. En este estado, la persona ya no piensa por sí misma: se convierte en un repetidor de eslóganes, consignas y narrativas prefabricadas. Al delegar su conciencia al colectivo, se transforma en una herramienta dócil capaz de cometer o justificar las mayores atrocidades sin experimentar remordimiento alguno. 👉 La conclusión de Bonhoeffer La estupidez no se cura con más instrucción o datos, sino con un acto de liberación interna y coraje moral. Hasta que el individuo no recupere la valentía de examinar sus ideas de forma autónoma y de tolerar la incomodidad de contradecir a su propio grupo, seguirá atrapado en este peligroso letargo.

Americans have had enough of outrageous taxes in America. It’s time to Abolish the Income Tax “Do y'all know why they call it your gross pay? Because it's f*cking disgusting to see what you could have made, bruh. When did the IRS clock in and work half my shift for me?” Remember, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele exposed The IRS and Income Tax System Are 100% unnecessary He said “You pay high taxes only to uphold the illusion that you are funding the government, which you are not” Abolish The IRS